Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

If someone asked him what birth feels like, Viktor would say this: It feels like fire. It feels like being torn apart. It feels like rain.

He hadn’t expected to wake up again after the crystal consumed him. The way his body had stretched, melted, fallen into itself like a crumbling building should not have allowed for him to take another breath. It would be greedy to even try.

Viktor inhales a lungful of air before he dares open his eyes. It’s... clean, he believes. Fresh. Light. He coughs, more on reflex than anything else, and brings a hand to his face. Presses his fingertips into his own forehead, shivers with it.

It’s cold.

He's cold.

The first drops of rain falling on him are a surprise, and it takes him a moment too long to blink his eyes open against them. They're colder than his fingers—

(his face burns, half shame half desire, and he considers for a second throwing himself into the river to cool down)

—and rough where they fall, trickle in rivulets down his temples into the earth below. There are clouds above – he internally chides himself for that thought, foolish as it is – heavy with the buzz of lightning, and it's loud, overwhelming after the quiet of the cosmos they left behind.

It still drags a laugh from Viktor's chest, wet and rough from the soreness of his throat, an ugly thing that makes his entire body jerk with it and almost dislodges the weight on his shoulder.

He's alive. He's alive and lying on coarse grass and shivering from the cold that shows no signs of wanting to stop. He's alive, his heart beating despite the crystal that had decimated it minutes – hours? – ago.

The deep, steady breaths blowing into the side of neck are almost scalding compared to the chill of the world around them, warm with as much life as his. The soreness of his body inches closer to outright pain with every second they spend there, but even dragging his hand away from his face feels like too much work against gravity.

During the early days of their partnership, when the rush of creating something as fantastical as Hextech had calmed to a placid flow, Viktor learned something about Jayce. His rest seemed to be just as contagious as the common cold, if not even more. Many were the nights they spent at the lab, too busy to make the walk back to their respective rooms, that got interrupted by his partner's first yawn, the gentle pull of drowsiness catching up with them in a matter of seconds after that.

Jayce usually fell asleep first on those nights, the slow rise and fall of his chest made all the more soothing by the blue ligth that had become a permanent fixture in their lab.

It is an odd thing to be relieved about, he thinks, but it's what pushes him to turn his head, just enough that Jayce's hair is tickling his nose. He has the same crease between his eyebrows as he's always had, the one that made him seem displeased at the oh-so-human need for sleep—

(the only thing keeping him from falling asleep is the man resting in front of him, the need to track every rise of his chest with his eyes)

—and the visions that came nightly with it. He supposes it's still possible for Jayce to be dreaming, after everything. He sure has the material for it now. The rain bears down harder on them now, soaking into the tangled mess of their hairs. He wonders if they look as intertwined as it feels they are.

It's a sharp twinge in his spine that spurs him to finally push at Jayce's shoulder once, then again when his expression doesn't change from the serenity of sleep. Dragging himself from under a sleeping body is harder then Viktor initially imagined – though he never thought he'd need to at all – but he feels oddly… unmoored, without Jayce's weight pressing him into the ground. Still, he shakes it off, eyes zeroed in on the impassive look etched on his face.

The unnatural stillness of it sends a shiver down his spine.

Lightning strikes somehwere to his left, far enough that he doesn't bother looking away from Jayce's sleeping face to check where exactly. His knee complains with the cold, with the humidity, with the position it's in, as if he can fix it all in an instant.

And Jayce is unmoving, soaked to the bone, dormant.

Viktor knew, deep down, that it was improbable for them to survive the explosion of energy that consumed them. Even more so for them to survive unscathed. The sight of Jayce's body – or the shell of it, with its skillful imitation of the original's movements – sends him scrabbling forwards, the pressure put on his leg at once too much for it to support, and he's half-crawling, memories of that night be damned, shoving at Jayce's shoulders again and again and again, his shape in the grass blurred into haziness, his throat seizing in a coughing fit until he can do nothing but let himself fall forward, forehead hitting cold skin – he's much too aware of the temperature of it now, when it's freezing under his hands.

He has a good enough understanding of his own body to know every breath of his must sound choked off, wheezing, but the storm raging on above them makes his desperation seem silent in comparison. The rawness of his throat isn't new either, the memory accompanying it carved into him, the screams overlapping in his laboratory until the purple light of the Hexcore engulfed all of his senses. His limbs can't seem to obey him, brain sluggish with exhaustion.

Jayce's chest rises under his face. Falls. Repeats its movements slowly, as if unsure of their use. Viktor waits, still gasping through every breath, presses an ear to where his heart should beat.

It's just as cold as the rest of his body, just as eerie. The fatigue weighing his body down is the only thing keeping him from another outburst. A moment later he has a weak heartbeat to blame that on too. Despite the cold and the stillness of his body Jayce's heart insists on preserving his life, and—

The tears that come to his eyes can be excused by the rain later, if the topic comes up. For now, the relief of having his partner alive under him, even if that life seems weak, is more than enough to have him slipping into slumber again, a second too early to feel the warmth of the sun sink into the ground beneath their bodies.

The whiz of a missile soaring through the sky is quiet, surprisingly so, when compared to the roar of its aftermath.

A shout, muffled by the commotion already thundering after the glass shattered. The pained scream of someone who must've been trapped under the rubble. Agony buzzing in the air, flooding his lungs where they're already struggling to fill. The difficulty keeping his eyes open – he's no stranger to fatigue, but this is much stronger than the sleepless nights in the lab – pulling him under, closer to the underground than he's been in years.

Pain shooting up his spine, down his legs, the excruciating sharpness of his body being jostled, shaken with every step his torturer takes towards – somewhere? Nowhere? It's impossible to tell through the throbbing in his head. He's set down on a hard surface, the table of their lab, and—

The familiar sound of Hextech humming to life tears a choked gasp out of his chest, eyes flying open. This body isn't his, the natural posture of it too relaxed around the edges, a slouch he knows only by sight in the Council's meeting room. The ecstasy in the back of his head is a distant echo of the original owner, ignited into terror with a spark that is only half his own.

Death feels like walking into a lake, drifting away from the shore and letting the darkness engulf him. Blood spilling from the crushed remains of his apostle's head, pooling in a halo of red and pink around it. The mortal's pain does not linger, fades as his thoughts disappear from reach.

(choosing to tread through the riverbed with a crutch wasn't his smartest decision, though it takes him three slips into the mud to admit it)

Moss looks particularly disturbing when it's covering the shape of a human, he decides. The hands holding the hammer are steady, perpetually frozen by their marble encasings – untouched by the corrosion that seemed determined to devour everything that wasn't its to take. Waiting. Neither of them have done much more than that since the last soul was assimilated.

The world beyond the statue – the final resting place of humanity – is a desolate, lifeless land of his own creation. Looking at it for too long is almost painful, memories of the lively nation that once stood there too fresh to be faded just yet.

Then again, what memory wouldn't seem fresh when one had the full stretch of eternity ahead of them?

(his heart twists in place when he looks up to find a cloaked figure staring down at him, now closer than it had gotten in the months he was trapped in this dimension. the familiarity of it is staggering, and he finds himself blinking owlishly at where its face should be, straining up on his knees to look closer, to try and see who insists on hiding under that hood)

A flower withers closer to them. The decay has been doing that recently, daring to approach their space, inching closer to the last piece of life it could ruin.

Viktor supposes it's a good time to start preparing.

Sunning wasn't an activity he spent time on when he was alive. It didn't seem all that thrilling to him, sitting outside to do nothing but feel the sun weigh on his body, and he kept himself busy with experiments in one way or another. Avoiding the sun, avoiding the sickening temperatures of Piltover's hot season, leaning into the gentle glow of Hextech that permeated their testing areas and kept the sun at bay.

Viktor wonders why he was so eager to avoid it now.

The ground is soft under his body, warmed by the sun, and the effort of opening his eyes is almost too much against the glare of it. There's something wrong in the air when he does – something just on the side of too perfect in the shape of the clouds, in the way they drift. In the white eye of the—

He doesn't know when he closed his eyes or when he sat up, but the sun is setting behind him and Jayce is still unconscious by his side, face hidden by overgrown grass. It takes him a few tries to rearrange his limbs comfortably, the ache in his thigh extending down to the ankle already, and Viktor almost expects Jayce to wake up and tell him the new position is bad for his back.

He does no such thing. Doesn't stir or huff or mumble about his dreams as he once did. The cramp in his leg lightens the slightest amount when he lets it bend off to the side, so he turns his focus to more important things.

Like the seemingly endless stretch of green surrounding them.

A meadow, broken only by the occasional tree, extends as far as Viktor can see. He searches the horizon, looks for a sign of something other than the plains of grass they've found themselves stuck in – or, more accurately, that he has found them stuck in, with Jayce as still as he was the first time he woke up. He ignores the sourness that thought brings to his mouth, pushes it back down to the pit it came from.

The sunset turns the world around them to gold. He doesn't know why that makes his hackles rise or why he can feel a shiver running down his spine, and looking back leads to no conclusions on that matter, the field too empty to hide anything dangerous.

Taking a look down forces him to correct that. If something wanted to hide, all it had to do was lie in the grass, waiting. Where they are it is short enough to only reach his hips, but the spots with taller grass could easily hide someone. Or something.

Wrongness settles in the pit of his stomach.

The sun was setting behind him before. It shouldn't be in front of him now, making him squint against gold.

Viktor's eyes drift back to where Jayce lies. Nothing about him has changed, not the steady movement of his chest or the furrow of his brow.

The sun is setting ahead of him.

He's ready for it this time. Viktor feels the world shift under him, rising towards the sky above, melting into stars and cold and the taste of metal at the back of his throat, almost too fast for him to fully register everything that passes him by, the dust of a nova rushing into his lungs when he opens his mouth – he doesn't know whether he planned to scream or cry out or just gasp, because all of it is drowned out by the roar of the world shaping itself.

It's overwhelming. It's beautiful. He can't take his eyes off the fissures opening in the sky, the way gold and blue slash through the stars and spread like wings above them.

Clusters of light make space for the power that descends from the rips in reality.

Fire ignites under Viktor's skin, the same heat that dragged him into Jayce's body when the world first fell around them.

And Viktor lets himself burn.

Chapter Text

The first thing Viktor registers is light.

Behind his eyelids, still closed, the world is bathed in warmth.

The second thing he notices is how soft the earth under his body feels.

It's reminiscent of his bed at home, a small luxury he invested into as soon as he could.

The third is the pain.

His body is stiff, skin stretched too thin on too long bones. Deep breaths put a strain on his chest, the tightness around it almost a perfect echo of his past – before Hextech, before Jayce, even before his introduction to the Academy. It's familiar, the way his lungs stutter at the four-second mark.

What isn't familiar is the way it spreads, his jaw and shoulders – even his hand – stiff and tense under a pressure that hadn't been there before. The pull of skin at the edges paints a bleak picture of his condition.

Ha.

A heart beats in his thigh, and it must have wrapped itself in thorns. The steady throb of pain is an intimate friend – his closest companion for the rainy days. He knows this, at least, is an ache he's shared a body with for a long time.

An inseparable piece of him.

Some sort of divine humor, is what this must be. Gentle earth sinking under his weight, the thorns of a hawberry tearing his leg apart from the inside out, warmth pulling him towards slumber while his mind fights against it.

In the end, rational thought wins. The light feels hotter, somehow, now that Viktor can see it, eyes struggling to blink open. An open sky awaits him, broken constellations in a backdrop of blue so intense it blinds him for a moment. The sting in his skin doesn't subside, and he's reaching a hand up to shield his eyes – the same hand that had held the light of the hex crystal before, when they were both desperate to keep each other as close as possible – when he sees why.

A scar covers the entirety of his hand, rough-looking and jagged where it fades back into pale skin. The colours of it are alarming, near perfect reflections of the sky – shades he's only associated with Hextech since the beginning of their research – melting into each other.

There is a night, about two months after he met Jayce, that he remembers in those same colours.

Piltover's observatory hadn't been high on his list of priorities when it came to visiting, but he'd let Sky pull him towards it anyway. There was an edge of enthusiasm to her gesturing as she guided the telescope from one side to the other, words spilling free as she explained what they were meant to be seeing that night.

It reminded me of you the last time I saw it, she'd said. He hadn't understood immediately, when looking into the eye of the telescope had only shown him a cloud of dust – he remembers being disappointed, underwhelmed at the simplicity of it.

An oversight on his part, really.

The explosion of colour in the photographs Sky had shown him later was nothing like he'd seen through the telescope. The dust was still present – she'd called it star dust, said it was necessary for the cloud to be visible – but at the heart of it, curled around a star, laid a burst of cerulean so bright it seemed to spill outside the paper.

Our eyes don't absorb light well enough to see them, Sky had pushed one of the photographs into his hands before sorting the others into a folder of her own, But the lenses do a good job at showing how beautiful they are.

A reflection nebula, she'd called it. A star that was too weak to fully ionize the surrounding area.

An almost flawless copy of it is branded into his skin.

Lifting his right hand is easier, but not painless. There's an insistent tug at his shoulder, and it makes him wonder just how much of him is in the same state as his hand, but moving his fingers is painless. The discoloration is startling, but not an immediate problem like the rest of his body.

So long as its tendrils don't expand too much.

It's an arduous experience, getting up without his cane.

The memories of how difficult it used to be are there, expertly placed at the forefront of his mind, but his time spent as more machine than human had dulled the pain present in them, short as that time might've been.

His leg gives out on the first try. He looks down at it – Jayce would have called it a glare, if he were awake to see it – and moves up to rise again. Ignores the iridescence curled around it, the way they are startingly similar to the scar Jayce had cradled close to his heart, hex crystal embedded in the middle.

The thorns tighten on his leg. He can't tell whether the sound leaving him is a cough or a pained exhale or something between the two, and he can't tell where the throbbing starts and where it ends. His leg and his back are screaming, but without a place to lean his weight on they won't be alone in that for much longer. He inhales, deep, wheezes it out when his lungs stutter. Takes a step closer to Jayce, nearly falls when his knee buckles.

A glance around gives him nothing of substance: they're closer to the woodland now, no longer at the top of a hill, but still too far for them to use as cover. He's sure those trees used to be just at the bottom of the hill.

Each step he takes sends lightning down his spine. He doesn't know when that became a good thing.

There's something to be said about the relief Viktor feels when he notices the patterns burned into Jayce's skin. Something about selfishness, he's sure, about the cruelty of wanting his partner to suffer as he does, burns and weak limbs and the aches of breathing with lungs that refuse to cooperate.

The blue in Jayce's right hand is an echo of his own – more vivid, maybe, but Jayce has always been the lively one between them, it's only fair that his body reflects that now. His burns seem to take more space than Viktor's, consume most of what he can see of Jayce's body – which is nearly all of it, admitedly – in a rainbow of uneven scars.

He doesn't have it in him to be unnerved at the stretch of it.

There's no sunrise or sunset to help him tell the time, so he counts the times he's slept.

It takes him two days to drag Jayce's body – and his own – to the edge of the forest.

He walks whenever he's able to, short steps that don't do much beyond leaving him breathless, and crawls when his leg fails him. His arms, and just about all other parts of his body, are protesting by the end of it, weighted into the ground by exhaustion and the heat of Jayce pressed to his side. But they're there, under the shade and away from the glare of the sky. Safe.

Viktor doesn't remember falling asleep, but it's not a surprise that he does.

He wishes he'd wake up to Jayce snuffling in his ear like he used to. It's sentimentality, he knows, but hearing even, slow breaths instead of the annoyed grumbling he'd gotten used to from early mornings in the lab is enough to lift the haze of sleep.

Anger twists in his chest, sharp, sours the memory before it has a chance to reach the forefront of his mind. There's an absence there, clawing at his ribs from the inside out, that has him looking down to make sure his lungs haven't spilled out while he was resting.

The fact that they haven't is offensive, in a way. A sorrow this deep should leave a mark.

Jayce's promise left one, a colourful mess spanning Viktor's heart and lungs where the ray struck him. Petals fall away from his hand when he raises it closer – the flowers hadn't been there before, but those changes have been happening for as long as he's been awake.

It's surprisingly easy to chalk it up to magic now.

This world is insistent on giving him more than he needs, Viktor finds.

A blink, and the tree they were lying under was heavy with fruit, sweet berries that left him reeling at the first taste. He'd never seen them before, but each step he takes deeper into the forest – pulling Jayce along as much as he can, leaning on the lower branches – reveals more trees with the same characteristics. It wasn't long before he lost sight of the edge and he knows that, by now, it will be impossible to find it again.

A shiver, more out of stress than cold, has him finding a blanket by his legs the next time he wakes. Tangled in the undergrowth, caught between one of Jayce's legs and the vegetation they'd used as a mattress, the same shade of blue it was the day Jayce wrapped it around him. Of all things that could have bothered him, the thought of Viktor feeling cold was what had spurred him to act.

Not the purple glow of the Hexcore, piercing through the fissures on his torso, or the bruised look of his skin – if it could even be called that, in the state it was in. The cold, which he couldn't even feel, was the breaking point.

Viktor pulled the blanket tight around Jayce's shoulders the moment he managed to tug it free. It hasn't budged from its position yet, draped over his sleeping body, no matter how many times Viktor's steps falter.

He doesn't know why he insists of leading them further into the forest. It hasn't changed since the edge apart from the occasional fruitless trees – different species, he figures, the leaves are too different for them to be the same – that freckled the scenery. There's no reason to keep moving.

He does anyway.

Inosculation.

Jayce had mentioned the term when they first tested the Hexcore's influence on plants, a glint in his eyes that made Viktor's heart flutter in his chest.

He's seen it then, in branches curved into each other surrounded by the unnatural glow of polluted Hextech, the pulses of it beckoning him closer after nights gone without sleep.

He sees it now, in the way trees melt together, trunks developing too close to distinguish which roots they belonged to originally.

Sees it in the swirls of colour on his skin, blue and red and gold mirroring the scars on Jayce's chest, how they fall in place when they lie down, his head resting over Jayce's heart.

Just... listening. The shivers that rush under his skin have nothing to do with the cold breeze sweeping through the forest. Viktor curls closer, eyes fixed on the flowers ahead of him – pink, blue, white, all blurring into an indistinct blotch under the weight of his exhaustion – and listens. Jayce's breaths are slow, and so is his heart, but they're still there for him to hear under the wind's whispering.

It feels invasive. The closeness, undeserved, reveals too much about his partner, and he—

Well. He's greedy. It's hard not to be when faced with Jayce Talis. Charming, as people had taken to call him, was never a strong enough word to describe the effortless magnetism that he seemed to exude. Even now, with his face slack from sleep, Viktor has to force his eyes away, to let them linger in some middle point until the pulse beneath his ear pulls him under.

Being quiet has never been Jayce's strong suit. It's a habit he shouldn't have encouraged during their time together, but the cadence of Jayce's voice had become impossible to tune out as soon as the first word came out of his mouth.

Viktor couldn't shun it away then, when their conversations consisted of equations abandoned halfway and theories on the stabilization of Hextech.

He couldn't shun it when their conversations turned into monologues, endless strings of grievances against the council and the responsibility they dumped on Jayce's shoulders.

The woods are too silent without it now, dead despite being surrounded by life as they are. A quiet that, in the end, proves itself to be a blessing.

After all, the hitch in Jayce's breath would have been drowned out if the world were any louder.

The first time Jayce invited him to the forge, he refused.

Piltover was being fustigated by a particularly forceful cold front that winter, an acceptable reason on its own, but the humidity it brought in had decided to linger, leaving him unable to walk much further than the distance between his apartment and the lab.

He'd slept hunched over his desk that night.

That was the only time he'd refused the offer. The fires at the forge were warm enough to keep the cold at bay, no matter how far from them he sat, and the dry air was a welcome respite from the fog outside.

Jayce, loose-limbed from the effort and the heat, sat by his side and let the words spill from his mouth, ideas still fresh in his mind. He had a habit of letting his leg into Viktor's space, pushing his knee against the cold metal of his brace – it was still recent, too stiff around the natural angle of his leg. Jayce felt like a furnace of his own, then.

His hand slips off the branch he was holding on to, and he crashes into the ground for the nth time since he started moving again.

There should be bruises mottling his skin at this point, with nature turning against him as it is, but the fire consuming his leg is distracting enough without him looking down at himself. Pulling Jayce through the thicket would already be hard without his body giving him a hard time, but the agony crawling beneath his skin made it near impossible.

His breath leaves him in quick puffs until he's coughing, fist shaking where it's clutching the blanket, Jayce bundled in it. The smell of dirt clings to the back of his throat and makes it impossible to breathe. Viktor's distantly aware of the sound of retching, but it doesn't register as his until he remembers there's no one else it could belong to.

Calming his own breathing so he can listen for Jayce's takes time. Once, twice, he has to start over for a coughing fit that leaves him curled on the forest ground, pain lancing up his spine with every movement. The tang of metal is faint in his mouth, but he's familiar enough with blood to recognize its taste.

It would be easier to dismiss the small noises Jayce keeps making in his sleep if the world stopped fighting him. Like this, it's impossible to see the changes – as sudden as that first stutter – as anything but a challenge, a sign that something happened against this universe's wishes.

But this isn't their universe, no matter how deep into it they travel.

They have no obligation to follow its rules.

Jayce lets out a snort in his sleep. Viktor wonders, briefly, if there's a dream hiding behind his eyelids.

The sky is invisible from where they are, sat against the trunk of a tree. He's not sure where the light comes from – it's not from above anymore, not with the canopy as thick as it is – but he has time, now, to think about all of it. The grotesque pops of his hip whenever he takes a step aren't new, they were the reason he got a crutch in the first place, and he knows better than to push his luck.

Instead he pulls Jayce closer between his legs, lets his head rest on his stomach – his chest is too sensitive, painful where skin merges into scar tissue from the explosion – and relaxes into the trunk.

It's not pleasant, far from it. Jayce's hair is greasy where his fingers run, plucking leaves from his overgrown curls, and there's a piece of bark digging into his neck, and he almost knocks Jayce into the ground while shifting into a position that's easier for his leg.

The vision of him waking up from that crosses Viktor's mind, the mere concept of it so ridiculous it has him biting back a laugh before he remembers himself.

He's alone. Perfectly isolated, with only Jayce for company in the middle of a dimension he doubts anything else has stumbled into.

A laugh bubbles out of his throat, wet and ragged.

Then another.

And then he can't stop, lungs stuttering between hysterical laughter and a coughing fit that rattles his whole body. It hurts beyond words, leaves his eyes burning and his ribs aching, but his chest spasms anyway, jostles Jayce where he's sleeping between his legs.

It's a good thing he's asleep. Really. The other option includes an already distressed Jayce – because waking up after being absorbed into the rune is something that will, undeniably, leave him agitated – hearing him struggle to take in a breath with the shivers that wrack through him.

When the first tear falls, it chooses to land on the crown of Jayce's head.

The sob that tears out of his throat is an ugly, raw noise, too loud against the emptiness of the forest's winds. He swears it was howling just a moment ago. Jayce's weight is too much, too constricting so close to his diaphragm, to the scar he left on Viktor's chest with the ray of a hammer that was never meant to be a weapon at all—

(the sight of his body buried in the rubble is what breaks him, because there is no world in which he would be this still, unmoving under a pillar)

—and he's pushing Jayce off him, both their legs still tangled in the blanket. Pain shoots up his spine when he twists away from the body, tears and spit falling somewhere in the pink flowers around them, but it's much too similar to when the Arcane first embraced him – a dull throb where his body should be and the serenity of death slipping through his fingers, dropping his mind far away from the physical world.

His body is weeping, shaking where it is bent at the waist, but he can't reach far enough into it to seize back control and stop. It's odd to be banished from the skin he's worn all his life, but the Hexcore had already done it once, allowed him to exist far enough from himself that the materials woven into him didn't disturb his still living mind.

Time means little when you shed your own corpse, when you float away and leave it to its own devices. Viktor lets himself rest.

He can't walk anymore. It's not just his leg and the thorny pain that has buried itself into his bones. The exertion of the past... days? Weeks? It had finally caught up to him, left him lying, weary, on the florest floor. The same restless sleep he had in life made a return, its lull impossible to resist after so long batting it away.

And this dimension, this world the rune flung them into, is intent on trapping them within itself. It's not subtle – and that's more insulting than the attempt, really – with the way the stems and roots that cradled them in their sleep now curled around his ankles, pulled him into the ground when he struggled to move.

They nestle close to him when coughs jolt his frame, a poor imitation of comfort, but shy away whenever he raises a hand, threat ready at the tip of his tongue.

At night – or the equivalent of it, thought it has become hard to distinguish from day with him sleeping more than he's awake – he hooks an arm over Jayce's waist, rests his head over the steady beat of his heart, and talks until his throat aches too much to go on.

"I believe you would know what these are," muttered while he runs a hand over the expanse of Jayce's chest, "I remember your illustrations, they were... similar. In pattern, at least." Of course he would know. That was something Jayce and Sky had bonded over in life, their shared love for everything that thrived outside their atmosphere. They'd held a seminar about it, together, talked about the formation of stars. Viktor hadn't taken his eyes off them for the entirety of it.

"You had this— This terribly ugly tie on, and I just wanted to grab you by the shoulders and tell you to find something else to wear. I mean, it was—" A cough interrupts his tirade for a moment, "It was our first competition, and you were wearing that? Terrible choice on your part." Jayce had kept the tie, in the end. Viktor had been too busy trying to keep the meager breakfast he'd had from coming back up, nerves eating away at him.

"I almost forgot you.

"There was too much happening in here—" Viktor taps his own forehead "—for me to remember everything. The people from the commune, those I healed, they... they were an extension of me. Of my mind. I already knew you were coming when you walked in, but— You weren't who I remembered." He rubs at the scar under Jayce's eye, the one he got on their first night. It's a small blessing that the rune allowed him to keep it.

"It was your eyes, you know? You looked so... scared, Jayce. I'm sorry. We all are, I think."

Jayce doesn't move. With the plants wrapped around his legs, Viktor doesn't move either.

He loses count of how many times he falls asleep like that, voice rough from overuse and arms tight around Jayce's body, before nature decides to turn on them again. It's not a storm, or uncontrolable vines trapping them, or a twist in reality like the ones that sent him tumbling into the forest so long ago.

It's eyes.

A singular pair of them, glaring from the shadows, shifting from gold to purple to blue as fast as he blinks. They're too high to belong to an animal and too low to belong to a human, but none of that matters with Viktor rooted in place as he is.

The emotion in them is nearly liquid, and it takes him far too long to see it for what it is. Maybe it's the shock of finding another living being that stops him from recognising the pure, unadulterated fury those eyes carry, maybe it's the foolish optimism that had him hoping for some company in this desolate plane, and by the time he understands, the creature is gone.

He's left alone with Jayce's even breaths and a whisper of wind. Turns his attention back to where Jayce rests, head in his lap. There's something different about him this time, the shadow of a grimace warping the fragile peace of his sleep. The slightest movement under his eyelids.

Still, his eyes don't open.

Viktor doesn't speak that night. He doesn't sleep. Instead, he stays vigilant of their surroundings, watchful in case the creature decides to show itself again.

He has his fingers threaded through Jayce's hair – a poor attempt at untangling it – when he catches it.

The twitch of Jayce's hand is minimal, but the contrast of blue scars against the green below means he notices every detail. It's quick, unconscious, just the slightest movement of his fingertips. He's breathless. The relief that washes over him is illogical, but—

Jayce is still there. He's sleeping, but it's not as deep as before, when all Viktor could hear was the unnatural steadiness of near-death. The small jerks of his fingers are a good sign.

He continues running his fingers through Jayce's hair, eyes fixed on the blue scarring of his hand. The oily feeling of the strands is unpleasant, but the unsightly mess of them is something Jayce had complained about the only time he tried growing his hair out, so Viktor stifles the desire to drag Jayce – and himself – into a river and does his best to undo the knots.

It's an exercise in patience he should have, but doesn't. He lost it in the hands of his own clock, when keeping himself alive became more than a distant concept. Between one night and the other, illuminated by the Hexcore's magic, he crossed a frame without a door, stepped into a world that, despite its dangers, refused to close itself off.

And it was beautiful.

Enchanting would be the closest word for its beauty, the gravitational field of a cursed existence that had almost consumed him.

It's hard to regret crossing that door, though, when this moment – fingers brushing through Jayce's hair, flirting with the scarred skin just above the softness of the blanket, his heart stumbling over itself beneath the weight of his partner – was what waited for him on the other side.

Viktor is tempted to speak again, strike a conversation with the wind and the pools of colour entrenched around them. The loneliness of a life this quiet was a surprise – he'd had the company of the hundreds of people he'd evolved before, a constant thrum of life under his skin – but one he'd gotten used to quickly. Jayce's unconsciousness doesn't make him any less of a good listener, and the silence of the forest is too stifling for someone used to the buzz of a nearby body to handle.

That someone being Jayce, of course.

He pauses his ministrations then, slips a hand under the blanket and presses it to the expanse of Jayce's chest. No twitch of his fingers at that. Viktor can feel the outline of ribs under the skin, a disturbing mirror of his own body whenever his health took a plunge, and wonders if Jayce can, by some terrible twist of their luck, hunger while still trapped under the cloak of slumber.

Selfishness – and something buried between his vertebrae, twisted and woven into the space of his ribcage – has him hooking his chin over Jayce's shoulder, burying his nose into the crook of his neck as the blanket slips to rest around their hips. A thousand voices split his will into their own egotistical desires, and a body as scorching as the forge it once worked drags him off the cliff of awareness.

Viktor is too far gone to notice the soft brush of Jayce's face falling towards cooling, uneven skin.

If someone asked him what death feels like, Viktor would say this: It feels like the embrace of a blanket. It feels like holding the love of his life in his arms while they sleep their existence away. It feels like falling into his arms, staring into those hazel eyes and gasping when Jayce's chapped lips press into his.

Death feels like trying to hold an open flame with his bare hands. The bright light that is life so close to being his yet darting away from his fingers when he dares to close them.

Life, playfully licking at his fingertips before they're plunged into a silent abyss.

Chapter Text

Ximena Talis is no stranger to loss.

The gods, kind as they may be, have taken from her before. Her husband, lost too early in an accident at the forge. Her fingers, traded for the safety of her son. Minor things, trinkets snuck from cabinets and shelves when her Jayce moved to his own house. Memories swept away by the ticking of a clock.

When she wakes with a suffocating weight on her chest, she knows her son won't be waiting for her in a medical tent, hurt but miraculously alive. She goes down to them anyway, anticipatory grief slowing her every step, gives today's volunteer his description. His name, when she says it might be difficult to find him just by appearance. She pretends not to notice the girl's wince.

"I'm sorry, we don't seem to have anyone by that name on the list," she says, hesitates before continuing with a pained look in her eyes, "He might be on the other one, ma'am."

She knows. She knows she won't find her Jayce laid in a cot, brows scrunched the way they did whenever he had a fever and seemed so utterly perturbed that it disrupted his day. She's already turned to leave, a quiet thanks past her lips, when she remembers to ask for Viktor. She isn't surprised when it gets her the same result. The moments where they separated were rare, even after Jayce took his position as councillor.

Ximena goes to the volunteer opposite her. She knows his name is Emile, and that his daughter was involved in the fight, and that he takes these shifts because no one else wants to break the hearts of the people who come here looking for their families. Because if he stays at home too long, the despair will make him another casualty of the war.

The bags under his eyes betray the exhaustion he tries to hide. She wonders if she has the same hopeless look in her eyes today or if having it voiced – "Could you please confirm his identity?" and "Our deepest condolences, ma'am" taking shape in someone's mouth – is what will finally give her grief shape.

Emile's answer, a simple shake of his head, doesn't lift the boulder from her chest.

There are two chairs in the tent. She falls into the one closest to him and takes the clipboard he offers with a small nod. As thoughtful as Emile is, exhaustion can make any man ignorant to what's right in front of them, and that's not something she has the heart to bear now. Not when her son is at risk.

So Ximena goes through the list – she recognises a few names, sends a prayer for each and every one of them, especially those she knows will go unclaimed. Runs through every letter of every name, checks the spelling mistakes people still do, even after all this time – she'd seen someone write his name as Jace Talese once and it'd almost put her in an early grave – but there's no sign of her boy.

The thing is, she knows he's gone. The same way she knew every time he accidentaly hit his forehead on the low doorframes of their home, and the same way she knew whenever there was something he wanted to tell her, the void in her chest is simply not something she can ignore and brush off as a bad feeling. Her son walked into a battlefield with a single goal, and she's sure he achieved it. She's not sure there would be anyone left to mourn if he hadn't.

Emile's eyes are still on her when she looks back up to him, a concerned frown painting his face again. She's never seen him without a frown, but this specific version of it – lips pressed into a thin line, one eyebrow almost raised, eyes misty with his own grief – seems reserved to the days she chooses to stay in that chair, keeping him company. The clipboard, cursed thing that it is, gets passed between hands before Emile decides it's wiser to sit with her.

The day is unfairly sunny for their moods, she notes. The people too, seem determined to look anywhere but where they are. She supposes it's a disturbing sight, the single tent reserved for the dead amidst so many put up for the living.

Emile jumps when she speaks.

"I don't think I'll see him again," she notices his head swivel towards her from the corner of her eye, "My son. Jayce." The sigh that escapes her is heavier than the hammers he used to work with. She has the sudden urge to leave, to make her way to the forge just to make sure Jayce hasn't fallen asleep there, exhausted but alive. "It's just—" She's interrupted by a sob, but even that gets drowned out by the chatter outside, "What am I supposed to do now?"

The handkerchief Emile offers is both a welcome pause to her thoughts and an invitation for him to talk. "The same thing you've been doing until now, I suppose," he winces at his own words, shakes his head, "They're still digging up bodies, Miss Talis. There's still hope."

The glare she sends him is scathing, or at least she hopes it is. She's heard the platitudes from just about every enforcer in the city, speeches given freely for those who still believe their relatives will be found under the rubble. Still, the concern in his eyes means she didn't quite hit the nail on the head.

"I waited for my Nina until I saw her—" he gestures to the open area behind them, "—in there. I still do sometimes."

They fall silent again. There's not much to talk about other than death while sitting in a space so utterly devoted to it, she's learned. A glance at Emile says enough about his opinion on the matter.

She re-checks the list five more times before the sunset chases her back home.

There have been pyres throughout the week. Not for the bodies, there are too many of them for that to be a viable option, but ceremonial, ritualistic, to put the hearts of broken families at ease. She can see today's pyres from Jayce's bedroom window, smoke rising from the riverside.

Jayce's room hasn't changed since the last time he'd been there. The bed is still made, like he'd left it, and the posters on the walls are glued as firmly as they've always been, and his bedside table has his trinkets and crystals scattered in the exact order he liked keeping them in. Ximena hadn't moved a thing.

Her boy had always been sensitive to that, always got upset whenever he accidentaly knocked one of his gems askew, and growing up hadn't changed that. Every weekend, Jayce would bring his Viktor for dinner and they'd end up mentioning how, since they had a lab for themselves, no one touched the perfect mess that was their organisation system. It was the most recurrent compliment they had for their work space.

The blue sheets on her son's bed are soft when she runs a hand over them. The bedside lamp turns on and off with the delay all old mechanisms take. The crystals on his windowsill filter moonlight into a rainbow on the floor of his room.

She can't stand the emptiness of it. It's too much like playing with a dollhouse, she imagines. A good fascimile, but an inanimate object nonetheless. The vacuum behind her ribs agrees, raises its head like a curious hound.

There won't be a body waiting for her to reclaim in the morning. Jayce won't be waiting for her in a medical cot, disgruntled and putting fear into the staff's eyes with his mere atittude. The grief of that thought it all-consuming, leaves her breathless for a moment, leaning on the foot of the bed until she finally straightens her back again.

Ximena catches a glimpse of smoke through the window as she turns to leave and makes a decision. Her son will have a funeral. It's the least he deserves. She supposes it will give her some peace of mind too, knowing he's finally resting.

She closes the door of her son's empty room with a wish.

"Sleep well, Jayce."